Lasers are used in many applications to write or scribe lines on surfaces. For example, laser writing on the surface of semiconductor wafers has been used to define or alter physical properties of devices formed in the wafer. The laser beam's high power and narrow beam width as well as the ability to precisely control the pattern followed by the beam on the surface make the laser ideally suited to such applications. However, where a large number of lines must be written or scribed on a surface, or in a production manufacturing environment, the use of a single laser beam to define a pattern can be very time-consuming, inefficient and, therefore, expensive.